The Issues

Oil

Either energy is serious, or it isn't. If it isn't, then stop blathering about
conservation and changes in lifestyle. If it is serious, than controlling energy amounts
to controlling people, and you may have to fight to prevent someone controlling your
energy resources.

The Emir's Faucets

The Emir of Kuwait, we're told, had solid gold bathroom fixtures, or maybe they were
platinum, or plutonium. While I was in Kuwait, I met people who had been tortured, had
spent months in hiding, and had had friends and loved ones disappear or be killed. Just
exactly what is the relevance of the Emir's plumbing?

Why Didn't We Finish the Job?

We did. The UN mandate for Desert Storm was to expel Iraq from Kuwait. What part of
that didn't we do?

So why didn't we go on and topple Saddam Hussein?

We didn't have a mandate to change the government of Iraq, only to free Kuwait.

The alliance included not only the US and its traditional allies, but also Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, and Syria. These are not countries used to cooperating closely with us or with
each other. This was not an extremely stable alliance - it held together to deal with an
immediate threat. The faster we did the job and got out before somebody remembered an old
grudge, the better.

Nobody, not us, not the Russians, and especially nobody in the Middle East,
wanted to set a precedent of the U.S. moving in, toppling a government, and replacing it
with something more palatable. Just look at all the friends we made in Latin America by
doing that.

Look at a map of the Persian Gulf and see who has all the waterfront real estate. That's
why they call it the Persian Gulf (Arabs call it the Arabian Gulf). Iran
is the major strategic factor in the Persian Gulf. Always was, always will be. That worked
tremendously in our favor when Iran was a staunch U.S. ally, but became a threat in the
days of Ayatollah Khomeini. So we want to keep Iraq from being a threat to Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia, but not totally powerless against Iran.

Immediately after the war, it did look like Saddam would go down. Between the
revolts in the north and south, plus disaffected officers, there seemed to be a very good
chance he would not last. Oh well.

Why don't we just let the generals fight the wars?Clausewitz
once noted that "war is politics conducted by other means." The only reasons
rational nations fight is for political ends. Irrational nations fight for adventure or
plunder perhaps, but then rational nations have to fight to defend themselves against
them. So war is inherently political. If you want a war free of political constraints you
want what never was, never will be, and never can be. While we're at it, I'd like an
absolutely unrestricted research budget.

The last general who got to fight a war absolutely on his own terms was probably
Napoleon. He'd probably have been much better off if he'd had a politician reining him in
and giving him reality checks.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are Still Repressive

Nobody elected us to remake these countries in our image. That was never our mission.

The Media

Ever since the Gulf War, the media has been cringing in embarrassment over the way they
were "handled" by the military. There are two main reasons why:

Despite all their political prejudices and innate tendency to reject U.S. policy out of
hand, the crassness of the Iraqi invasion and the brutality of the occupation got to many
of them morally. The technical competence of the Allied forces and the inherent excitement
of the conflict caused many media reporters to be swept up by the events. They lost some
of their professional "detachment", or maybe it's more accurate to say that for
the first time in their careers they found objective reality more interesting than their
own fantasies.

The military "read" the media perfectly and gave them exactly what they
wanted: comfortable quarters, convenient briefings, good sound bites and nifty footage.
The media showed they could be bought, and cheaply at that. And they're
angry at the military for revealing it.

So while many media critics lament the "uncritical" reporting during the Gulf
War, my perception is that between the inherent excitement and fast pace of the events,
plus adroit work by the military, for the first time in many years the media covered an
event solely by reporting the facts largely devoid of ideological spin. The Gulf War was
reporting done the way it ought to be done if the media were doing their jobs properly.

A good indication of how the media would like to have handled the conflict was the way
one network tried to get permission to film inside the facility in Dover, Delaware where
bodies would be returned. The military refused access and were upheld in court. Exactly
what information would filming there have provided the American public? How
bodies are processed for burial? Any funeral director can tell you that. The number of
casualties? Maybe, if there were any suspicion the casualty figures were being faked. But
there are too many ways to spot fakery to make that an even plausible scenario. We're just
too open a society. There is no information whatsoever to be gained by filming
inside the facility; the only purpose of doing so would be to create emotional impact.
Creating emotional impact takes us outside the realm of journalism and into the realm of
entertainment or political advocacy. Both are protected by the First Amendment but they
don't carry the same aura of sacredness as informing the public. The government is obliged
to help keep the public informed; it's not obliged to keep them entertained or to provide
material for political activism.

The Embargo

We're causing immense suffering to the people of Iraq by continuing the embargo.

Excuse me. Who's causing the suffering? It wouldn't be Saddam Hussein by any
chance? And it wouldn't be the Iraqi people, who allowed him to come to power and are
doing nothing to get him out?

We also caused immense suffering in Germany during World War II. The suffering was
caused by the actions of Adolf Hitler, who was allowed to come to power by the German
people, and who failed to take effective action to remove him once his policies had proven
disastrous.

Does this seem harsh? Ask yourself two questions:

Who's more morally responsible for creating the problem, a citizen of a country ruled by
a rogue regime, or a foreign soldier who probably has never visited the country and may
never have even heard of it?